Are you ready to stand up?

Feldenkrais Lesson with Josephine Horder

Josephine Horder, professional cellist and Feldenkrais practitioner

 

This is an 18 minute lesson exploring the role of feet in alert sitting and readiness to stand up.

 

Moshe Feldenkrais proposed that a hallmark of an efficient action is that it requires no preparatory adjustment. In light of this, the question becomes - are your feet positioned in such a way that you are ready to stand up? Or even - is the whole of you connected to your feet so that you are poised and ready to stand up?

 

As a cellist, I have had a career-long apprenticeship in sitting. It has been a revelation to discover how much feet can contribute to efficient action; they are an essential component in alert sitting, a sense of readiness and freedom to move in any direction, an ‘antidote’ to a state of inertia. By actively connecting with the floor, the feet can fire up an anti-gravity energy into the hip joints, pelvis and spine, providing a living ‘launchpad’ for poised sitting and readiness for action.

 

From the 2024 series for International Feldenkrais Awareness Week, "Transitions”

Lesson courtesy of www.feldenkrais.co.uk